Even as a child, Halloween for me wasn't the day all my classmates and friends talked excitedly about. We didn't really go trick or treating. My mom would load us up and we would go visit our relatives. This is the only part of Halloween that I actually enjoyed. When my great grandmother was still living we would go visit her. She would make the best popcorn balls. We would go visit my grandparents, my great aunts, and any other relative we could squeeze in before bedtime. We didn't go to a lot of houses and didn't get a lot of candy, but we were okay with that. My dad would eat it all after we went to bed anyway. :)
My sister and me in our "costumes." I hated Halloween even then.
The part I hated was the costumes. My mom couldn't sew and wouldn't spend a fortune on costumes so we always looked a little raggedy, and not in a good way. When I was in elementary we always had a costume contest. I was already crippled with shyness on a good day so the weeks leading up to Halloween I was miserable with anxiety. I knew I wasn't going to win. I never had a chance. It was humiliating to stand up with the rest of the class, wrapped in a sheet, pretending to be Cleopatra, when the rest of my class was standing there decked out like stars. I remember that embarrassment and wondered every year why I even tried. Then, I would look out at the students in my class who weren't in costume. They were too poor to even have a sheet to wrap around themselves.
I'm thankful Zoe's school doesn't allow costumes on Halloween. I'm also thankful that so far I have been able to get away with both kids wearing hand-me-downs and being happy about it. With two kids and one on the way on a minister's salary, we can't afford to buy brand new costumes every year. We cant afford to provide sugary sweets to the neighborhood hooligans.
Halloween, in my eyes, is nothing more than a huge money suck. Everything about it requires you to shell out some dough. It's difficult for my family, I can't imagine what families less fortunate that us feel on this day.
